BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana authorities have agreed to pay $9 million to a man who was partially paralyzed from the waist down after a trooper shot him in the back during a 2018 traffic stop in Baton Rouge and then falsely reported it as a Taser discharge.
The settlement reached last month is among the largest of its kind in state history and resolves a federal lawsuit by Clifton “Scotty” Dilley, whose injuries confined him to a wheelchair when he was 19. The terms of the settlement, which were not made public, were provided to The Associated Press by a person with direct knowledge who was not authorized to disclose them and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The shooting was mentioned in a U.S. Justice Department report this year that found Louisiana State Police used excessive force during arrests and vehicle pursuits.
State police fired Trooper Kasha Domingue after determining she shot Dilley “without any reliable justification,” failed to activate her body-worn camera and gave inconsistent accounts that were contradicted by surveillance video.
The agency also found that her misreporting the incident as a tasing “delayed the appropriate responses to the shooting,” according to records reviewed by AP.
Domingue’s explanation for opening fire evolved over the years. Court records show that she alternatively claimed she mistook her firearm for a Taser, pulled the trigger by accident or said the shooting was justified because she feared for her life.
Dilley was a passenger in the vehicle that was pulled over. He said the trooper never ordered him to stop fleeing before shooting. Moments after he was struck, he told Domingue he had lost feeling below his waist.
“I was like, ‘What’s wrong with my legs?’” Dilley said in a deposition. “She says, ‘It’s a Taser aftereffect. It will wear off.’”
In fact, a bullet struck Dilley’s spine.
Domingue’s initial account fell apart quickly. She told investigators Dilley ran around the stopped vehicle and reached inside it before charging toward her. That claim was contradicted by surveillance video from a nearby store that clearly showed the unarmed man running away from the trooper.
“If that camera wasn’t there I don’t know how this would’ve turned out,” Dilley said in the deposition.
“What happened to me that night will forever change my life,” said Dilley, who was represented by former U.S. attorney and Louisiana congressman Don Cazayoux. Dilley said he hopes the “case will effect change within the state police that will keep this from ever happening again.”
An attorney for Domingue, Louis Oubre, declined to comment, as did the state Attorney General’s Office.
The $9 million settlement is among the largest ever paid in Louisiana in a case involving police violence. Baton Rouge agreed in 2021 to pay $4.5 million to the children of Alton Sterling, a Black man whose fatal shooting by police was captured on video and sparked widespread anger and protests.
More than two years after the shooting, prosecutors charged Domingue with aggravated second-degree battery and illegal use of a weapon. She pleaded guilty in 2022 to obstruction of justice, a misdemeanor, avoiding jail but agreeing never again to serve in law enforcement. Her conviction has since been expunged.
The civil proceedings raised questions about whether Domingue ever should have become a state trooper, underscoring the liability the state could have faced had the lawsuit gone to trial. State police records show a series of red flags dating back to her time in the training academy, including failed tests and issues on the firing range.
The agency allowed her to graduate academy despite those problems, requiring that she complete additional training before receiving her commission. But instructors expressed misgivings about her suitability. One internal report said she “struggled from the onset of the class, both physically and mentally.”
The Justice Department alluded to Domingue in its findings on the state police’s widespread use of excessive force. It noted that she remained a trooper for more than two years after the shooting due to a policy of putting off internal investigations while criminal inquiries are underway.
“This can add significant delays to the accountability process,” the report said.
Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, criticized the report as an attempt “to diminish the service and exceptionality of” the state police. The federal probe began in 2022 amid fallout from the in-custody death of Ronald Greene, who was beaten, tased and dragged on a rural road in northern Louisiana.
The DOJ rescinded its findings in May, saying it was ending the “failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments.”
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